


It snows in Alexandria

by MDnata



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Angst and Humor, Canon up to Alexandria, F/F, F/M, M/M, Maggie is pregnant but not for long, Negan´s wives, Slow Build, Slow Burn, then not so much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2019-08-18 19:27:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16523219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MDnata/pseuds/MDnata
Summary: In a world where Rick Grimes never died, Negan was mostly an annoying - if somewhat dangerous - neighbor, walkers were an occupational hazard and no one came to whisper nothing to anyone whatsoever, Daryl is trying to find his place in the ever growing community, not to mention his role in the lives of some of his group members, who seem to have left the road behind them for good.





	1. Daryl is just fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl does some thinking and agrees to teach Eric to hunt.

  
Their first winter in Alexandria was… different. They had roofs over their heads, food to fill their bellies and only those poor bastards who´d drawn the night shift had to freeze their asses off at the wall, during the coldest peak of the night.  
  
Daryl had volunteered more than once, to be one of those poor bastards, just for the heck of it. He didn´t like the cold, but during that First winter after the End he´d learned to deal with it. _And_ to be grateful for it. The cold, the snow, the ice. They were a bother but the walker activity during winter time was also at its lowest.  
  
T-Dog used to say he´d have snow up his ass every god damn day of the year if it only meant there´d be no walkers. Daryl hadn´t actually agreed – though at the time he hadn´t really seen any point in arguing over something like that – he liked the sun, liked to be warm. Cold was fine, for a month or two, but he´d always be waiting for the warmth of the summer´s sun on to warm him up again.  
  
“You gonna be alright up there?” Rick asked as he was getting ready to start his shift.  
  
They´d been eating at Rick´s house, all of them. A family dinner. Possibly Michonnes´s idea, though it could have been Rick´s too. Or maybe they´d thought it up together. Who knows. Nowadays, it was hard to say where Rick ended and Michonne begun. It had been the same for Maggie and Glenn, once upon a time, though by now they had learned to operate as independent units again, if by some chance the other happened to be somewhere else.  
  
“I´ll be fine.”  
  
He would be too. It wasn´t overly cold night and the new jacket he´d found during a run would keep him warm the couple of hours he´d signed up to stay up there. “Got my jacket. And it isn´t even that cold.”  
  
“I know. But it´s third night in a row you´re on duty. You could take a break once in a while too, you know. Spend some time with us.”  
  
“During the night?” Daryl smiled. “I love ya man, but I´m not quite that ready for a threesome with you and Michonne.”  
  
The giggle – yes, giggle – that escaped the man´s mouth at that was very much worth the joke that to Daryl wasn´t even that funny. It was usually like that for him anyway, when it came to Rick Grimes. At some point, after or during the prison, he´d picked up a habit of aiming to please the man, just to see him smile a bit. Made him always feel a bit better too.  
  
“Just be sure not to lose any of your toes to the cold, wise guy.”  
  
“There´s nothing wrong with _my_ shoes, officer”, he said, looking at the man´s feet.  
  
It was a well-known fact that Rick hadn´t changed his shoes once after having woken up from his coma. Said they were his lucky shoes. “Besides, like I said, it´s not even that cold.”  
  
He was about to pat Rick´s stomach with the back of his hand, but changed his mind in the last minute. And his aim from stomach to shoulder.  
  
“See ya later, man.”  
  
“Yeah, go freeze your nuts off, will you.”  
  
“Day by day, you sound more and more like Negan.”  
  
Rick – possibly the biggest Negan disliker there was – made a face. “Please, don´t even _joke_ about that.”  
  
Daryl just smiled and went on his way, leaving Rick standing there, under the yellowish light of his otherwise dark porch.  
  
  
  
  
  
He didn´t end up losing any of his toes that night and after, when Rosita had relieved him, he wandered for a while, pondering on where to sleep. Rick´s house was a no-go, he didn´t want to accidentally wake up Judith or Carl. Or walk into anything he didn´t really want to see. Not that anything like that would be happening on a living room couch instead of a bed, not with kids in the house. Hopefully.  
  
Carol´s ex-house was an option too, but after she´d moved her residence to the Kingdom, Daryl hadn´t really felt that comfortable there anymore, even if most of the group still resided in there. Or at least, spend major part of their time there. Aaron´s house it is.  
  
Considering the time he got there he was surprised to see Eric still awake. The man was sitting in the kitchen, reading a book and drinking something that really shouldn´t at this time of the day be coffee.  
  
“Want some hot chocolate?” Eric asked when he saw him enter.  
  
Well, not coffee then.  
  
“I´m fine”, Daryl said, resting his crossbow against his leg. “How come you´re still up?”  
  
“Couldn´t sleep. Thought I´d finish this before Olivia starts to ration my food for not returning it.” Eric rolled his eyes, fondly. “Scary lady, that one.”  
  
Daryl hummed, not really having an opinion on the matter. He hadn´t dealt with Olivia that often – at all, really. But Carol had given the woman her stamp of approval so he guessed she was okay.  
  
“Actually, I wanted to ask you for a favor.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah… I was wondering if you could teach me how to hunt. Or track… or whatever it is you do out there. In the woods.”  
  
The way Eric´s voice got quieter and quieter by the end made Daryl wonder if the man was just unsure of himself or actually embarrassed for asking such a thing.  
  
“You sure?” He had to ask. Having Rick to train in the art of squirrel chasing was one thing – he hadn´t been the easiest of students, not at least when it came to tracking something. Anything really. But he had learned, eventually. Rick though, had been more than used to the woods they lived in. Eric, like the rest of the Alexandrians, didn´t have that kind of experience. “It´s not actually something we need to do anymore.”  
  
Or so they kept telling him.  
  
“Yeah, well you never know, right?” Eric was now tapping the mug in his hands with his fingers. “I´d really, really like to learn though, if you have the time. Of course if you don´t I totally get it I mean I can always ask someone else. But I just thought-“  
  
“I can do that”, Daryl said, if only so shut the nervously babbling man up. “It´s better to do it now anyway.” He flicked hair off his face. “Less walkers.”  
  
“Okay, good, yeah. Thank you, Daryl. Thank you _so_ much.”  
  
“…Okay. When do you wanna go?”  
  
“Erm… tomorrow?”  
  
Daryl nodded and started for the stairs, but then a thought popped in to his head – an alarming little thing it was too – and he had to turn back.  
  
“Hey, this ain´t gonna be something you don´t wanna Aaron to know about, or…”  
  
Even if Eric would have wanted to surprise his partner with his new skills, or something stupid like that, it still would have meant secrecy, lying and misunderstandings and Daryl was not going to have none of that with these two. He already had problems with Rick and basic communication and he sure as fuck didn´t want those problems with Aaron too.  
  
“What? Oh, no, nothing like that”, Eric assured him. “I was going to tell him anyway. After I´d talk to you.”  
  
“Alright. I´m gonna go get some sleep”, Daryl said, gesturing to the stairs.  
  
“You do that. I´m gonna go soon, too. But hey, you are going to actually sleep in there, right?”  
  
“What, you think I´m gonna wait till you fall asleep and sneak off to sleep in that freaking cold garage of yours? No thanks.”  
  
Eric smirked and returned to his borrowed book. “Just stay in your bed, dear.”  
  
“Will do, ma.”  
  
The room they had given him was nothing fancy. Not too small, not too big and it came armed with one surprisingly good bed, one desk and chair combo and one closet for clothes he didn´t have. The once he _did_ have usually ended up on the chair or on the floor anyway.  
  
During summertime and pretty much all of autumn he´d been either sleeping in the couple´s garage where all his tools and stuff were or napping on their couch. It really depended on the mood he was in. But when autumns was at its end and the temperatures dropped they more or less forced him to move in a room upstairs.  
  
Once or twice he´d still found himself sleeping at Rick´s house too, but now that Carl didn´t have to go to that garage school anymore – Rick had more or less put an end to that – he was the one taking care of Judith so even on that account, Daryl´s services were no longer needed. At this point, Beth would have told him to go there to “visit a friend” like the rest of the group did, but to Daryl, it just wasn´t that easy. Rick had been his leader on the road and back at the prison. Now Daryl didn´t really know _what_ he was.  
  
Before going to bed, Daryl brushed his teeth and washed his face – something he actually did quite regularly, when he had the chance, as hard as it was for _some_ people to believe. Then he kicked off his shoes, got rid of his jacket and the long sleeved shirt under it, leaving only a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and finally he crawled on the bed on top of the covers. In hindsight, he should have kept the jacket and use it as a blanket, but… fuck that, the room was pretty well heated anyway.  
  
It took some time to fall asleep but when he finally did, he didn´t dream.  
  
  
  
  
  
Early the next day, there was no one in the kitchen by the time Daryl got there, but there was one Rosita in the living room. She was sleeping on the couch, her booted legs on the coffee table. Daryl had heard her come in during the night, so seeing her now wasn´t that much of a surprise.  
  
Neither was the fact that she was up and about when the door to the fridge opened a bit too loudly. She was a light sleeper.  
  
“Oh, it´s just you”, she said and put her knife down.  
  
“Did I wake you?”  
  
“No, that freaking door did.” She came to sit by the table. “Is there anything there that doesn´t need frying or smoking or something like that.”  
  
“There´s some… cucumber. Tomatoes. And a jar of some kind of jam or Jell-O.” Daryl didn´t even want to know what the green thing behind the aforementioned jar was. “There might be some beans in the cabinet though.”  
  
Rosita was shaking her head and cursing in Spanish before he´d even finished the sentence.  
  
“I´m not eating another bean before I absolutely have to. Give me the cucumber. Eric can eat tomatoes with his spaghetti.”  
  
“Catch”, Daryl said and threw the vegetable at her.  
  
After having investigated the fridge for something decent to eat, he was starting to consider the beans himself. This though, was when Rosita finally decided to start a conversation.  
  
“It´s official now”, she said. “Abe and Sasha.”  
  
Yes, ´cause _this_ was the conversation he wanted to have.  
  
He took the fucking bean can, found himself a spoon and sat down opposite her.  
  
“Ain´t it better this way?” he asked, while wrenching the can open with the blade of his knife.  
  
“I don´t know. Is it?”  
  
Daryl shrugged his shoulders. “No more lying or cheating at least.”  
  
Rosita chewed on her cucumber, thinking. “I´m not sure you can cheat during an apocalypse”, she finally said. “You see someone you wanna fuck and go for it. If you don´t date there can be no cheaters. And Abe just happened to meet someone who interested him more than me. Good for Sasha.”  
  
She seemed a bit more down than she let on.  
  
“You gonna be okay?”  
  
“Yeah... If he moved on, I can too. Already did, actually. I slept with Spencer.”  
  
The things he really, really, really didn´t need to know.  
  
“Good for you?” It came out more of question than it was supposed to, but Daryl really didn´t know what to say. Telling her he´d rather get in bed with a walker than Spencer surely wasn´t the right thing to do.  
  
“Yeah, it was. Good, I mean.”  
  
Now she was just teasing him.  
  
“Could we please not talk about Spencer?”  
  
“Fine by me. So, what´s up with you and our fearless leader Richard the first?”  
  
“…could we please not talk at all?”  
  
  
  
  
  
Daryl had promised Eric he would teach him, but somehow the group he took out to the forest that morning ended up being a bit bigger than expected. First, Aaron said he wanted to come too. Not to protect Eric, in that, he had been very, very clear. But to learn some himself. Then Rosita had decided to tag along, if only to watch out for Daryl´s back while he tried to teach some sense into the other two. Daryl suspected her real reason to be that she didn´t want to run into Abraham or Sasha, but as long as she was there with her guns and her knives he really didn´t care what that reason was.  
  
To his surprise, Eric actually was a passable student. Sure, he was afraid of spiders, but so was Carol, and that hadn´t slowed her down one bit. Not that they would come across any spiders during winter, but then again, you could never tell what lived inside the warm torsos of the walkers that were able to move around enough to be a threat to them.  
  
Daryl remembered one that had had living rats inside it. At the time, he´d considered even eating them, but Carol had threatened to castrate him for even thinking about something like that, so he hadn´t. By now they knew one could eat animals that had fed on walkers without getting sick, but at the time it´d been too much of gamble. Plus it was gross. Even to him, and _he_ ate right about anything.  
  
“Can I try to shoot with the crossbow?” Rosita asked when they´d been out for an hour and a half. She´d been looking at Aaron and Eric who were wandering about searching for any kind of paw prints to identify and was now apparently getting bored.  
  
“Yeah but if you accidentally kill someone it´s better not be on me.”  
  
“Relax, Daryl”, she huffed and took the crossbow offered to her. “Look, I´ll even point to the other direction so those two stay safe.”  
  
“How considerate of you”, Aaron with his sharp-as-fuck-ears commented somewhere left of them, before diving down to investigate one especially interesting bush.  
  
Rosita paid him no mind. “There´s one walker over there”, she said to Daryl, who´d spotted it about the same time she had. It was quite a big one too. But since it was only standing there, it would make a good target for her to play with.  
  
“Go ahead then, but any arrow that ends up in a tree is either yours to get back or replace.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah…” she lifted up the crossbow, aimed and… stopped to shout: “If there´s people there with working brains you better stay down or announce yourselves some other way so I won´t shoot you by accident!”  
  
“You shouting out for, there could be anybody there”, Daryl said. “And now that walker is on the move too.” Slowly, but still.  
  
“That anybody could also be Carl and Enid”, Rosita answered pointing ahead, to the direction that the walker was. And what do you know, there really was two sheepish looking teenager´s coming out of hiding. Well, only one actually. There was nothing sheepish in Enid´s sulky expression.  
  
“How´d you know?”  
  
“I´ve seen them here before and took a wild guess.”  
  
“If you´re gonna shoot it with that then wait ´till we get out of the way, will you”, Carl laughed when he´d gotten within the speaking distance. Enid followed, dragging her usual brown backpack in one hand and clutching the handle of a knife with the other. Clever girl, that one.  
  
“Shut up and get behind me”, Rosita sneered, but there was laughter in her voice, if only a little.  
  
“Hey Daryl”, Carl greeted, after coming to stand beside him.  
  
“If you´re here then who´s watching Judith?”  
  
“Tara is. She wanted to spend some time with her before taking Denise with her on a run.”  
  
Oh, right. That.  
  
“Are you all here hunting walkers?”  
  
“We´re hunting”, Daryl said, glancing at two men behind him. “Or at least trying to.”  
  
“I heard that”, this time the commenter was Eric, but he had been close enough to hear anyway, so it wasn´t as impressive as it had been with Aaron before.  
  
“You still haven´t taught me how to use the crossbow”, Carl said after having seen Rosita nail the walker down with one arrow and then leaving to get that arrow back from the tree it had got stuck in _after_ piercing the walker´s head.  
  
“Yeah, well that can wait ´till you tell me what the two of you are doing out here.”  
  
“How is that even any of your business?” Enid asked, which pretty much told him they were up and about, without permission, as usual.  
  
“When it´s you is not, but Carl´s another matter.”  
  
“Are you going to tell dad?” Carl asked, showing him that sheepish little smirk again.  
  
“If you get eaten I´m pretty sure I have to. Not that I know what to say ´cause you still haven´t told me exactly what it is you´re doing out here stalking an unmoving walker instead of getting rid of it.”  
  
“We weren´t stalking it, just… observing.” The kids glanced at each other and then Enid said: “It almost seemed like it was asleep before, um, Rosita shouting at us.”  
  
“Hey, guys”, Rosita, as if on que, shouted again. “I can hear cars coming up on the road. Is someone coming?”  
  
Daryl looked at Carl, who out of the six of them had seen Rick the most.  
  
“Not that I know of”, he said. “But Negan was supposed to come later on this week. Maybe he´s early.”  
  
Oh, fuck.  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if cucumber's a vegetable but to Daryl it is.


	2. Negan comes to town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judith likes the snow, Rick doesn't like Negan and Negan has a question for Daryl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's more snow in this fic than there is where I live and that's just sad. It's winter! Where's my snow?

  
Rick woke up when someone was tugging at his hand. First there was one hesitant little tug, then came another, now more urgently.  
  
“Daaa-ad”, Judith whined with petulant, childlike annoyance, that only children of her age were able to pull off without getting too much on the nerves of their poor parents. Their poor, tired parents, who had drunk a bit too much wine and so not enough water the night before.  
  
“Whaaa-at?” he asked, eyes still closed.  
  
“Can you get up? Pleeease?”  
  
“No can do darling, I´m sleeping.”  
  
“Are not.”  
  
“Am too.”  
  
“But you´re talking to me.”  
  
“Mmh, ´m talking in my sleep.”  
  
“Mom says you´re not supposed to lie.”  
  
His girl must have been getting tired of this charade, ‘cause she went and pulled the Mom Card.  
  
“Does she now?” he smirked into his pillow. “Maybe you should try to wake her up then and let your daddy have his beauty sleep.”  
  
“Yes, because daddy really needs it”, he heard Michonne snicker from behind him, sounding far too cheerful to his liking.  
  
“Come on, dad! I wanna go outside. It´s raining snow again.”  
  
“You mean it´s snowing outside. _Snowing._ ”  
  
“Snowing.”  
  
“Yeah, snowing.”  
  
“If you have time to correct me daddy you have time to get up.”  
  
This clever little comeback made Michonne burst out laughing. Rick tried – and failed, due to the woman´s quicker than quick reflexes - to hit her with his pillow before following his already more or less dressed daughter out of the bedroom.  
  
“Wait for me to get dressed, okay?”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“That’s my girl. Go get your mittens while you´re at it.”  
  
Again, he was rewarded with another one of Judith´s trademark sighs – this one clearly meant she thought he was being exasperating again.  
  
“M'going”, the girl huffed wondering off to look for her winter clothing while Rick began the search for his pants and socks.  
  
He understood Judith's excitement over the huge amount of snow, since they usually didn’t have that much of it. Not enough for her to play in, at least. Pretty soon they would have to start shoveling the snow off the streets or they´d end up being snowed in inside their houses.  
  
It was colder now too, much colder than it had been the previous few winters, and it worried him.  
  
He dreaded the day Carl or Judith would get some nasty, hard-to-cure flu like the one they had had raging amongst them back at the prison. The kids would get sick now and then, especially Judith, who was younger and weaker and had no kind of vaccination given to her whatsoever, but never nothing like that. Luckily, Denise had had them run after all kinds of medicines and medication kits leaving them far better off than they had been during the start of the prison flue.  
  
Then there was Daryl, who not only had lost some weight – more than it was normal while on winter rationing – but who also refused to wear proper winter clothing ‘cause it would “hinder” his movements. No thick cloves, no scarfs, maybe some sort of hat if it got really cold during the night. Of course, he did have that new, quite warm-looking jacket of his, but still.  
  
Rick worried.  
  
Be that as it may, Judith was delighted. She ran around, trying in vain to capture softly falling snowflakes with her tongue and when that didn't work, she tried using her mitten-clothed hands to do the job.  
  
She reminded him of Carl when he was of the same age, so much so that something inside him begun to ache for the things he could never be able to give her, or for Carl himself, for that matter.  
  
Not anymore.  
  
One might argue Carl was hardly a child anymore though – hadn’t been for a long time – but he’d always be Rick’s boy. Who, by the time he managed to persuade Judith to come back inside, was sitting in the kitchen, eating breakfast with Michonne.  
  
“Morning dad.”  
  
“Morning”, he said, helping Judith out of her winter clothes, before there was snow in AND out of the house. Easier said than done. The girl was restless, wanting to join the others. Michonne rose up, gave Rick a quick kiss and started on making something for Judith to eat.  
  
“You have any plans for today?” Rick asked Carl.  
  
“Not really”, the boy said. “Was gonna go somewhere with Enid before my shift at the stables. If that's alright?”  
  
“Sure it is.”  
  
“Are you going to show up there too, this time?” Michonne asked over her shoulder, referring to the incident, where Carl had fallen asleep reading a comic book one morning and thus gone “missing”. Neal, their primary horse attendant had reported his absence to Rick, who’d nearly had a heart attack. They’d spent the following day looking for the boy. Amazingly, no one had thought to check his room.  
  
“Ha ha, very funny. Your mom's a real comedian, isn’t she, Jude?”  
`  
“She is?” Judith asked, interested. “What’s a comedian? Can I be one too daddy?”  
  
“Honey, I think you already are”, Rick hummed, trying in vain to tidy her up a bit. The hat had really messed up her hair. “Which reminds me, who’s babysitting today?”  
  
“Tara was going to”, Carl said. “She said so yesterday, remember?”  
  
Oh right, she had said that.  
  
“Auntie Tara?”  
  
“Yeah, auntie Tara’s playing with you today.”  
  
Judith had so many aunts and uncles it was a miracle she remembered any of them.  
  
“That’s settled then. Are those delicious looking toasts to me?”  
  
“No, dad. They are mine.”  
  
“Okay then…”.  
  
  
  
The day might have been one of the great ones, had Negan not showed up and ruined it the rest of it.  
  
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Rick moaned after having heard the news. He’d been studying the newly made maps of the area surrounding them – locations of the herds were marked with red, green and blue pins according to their size and activity.  
  
“I don´t know, but he already intimidated Eugene to let him and his boys in so yeah, his in.” Sasha was looking at him cautiously. “Do you want Abraham to throw him out?”  
  
No. If anybody did any throwing it would be him. If only he could.  
  
Rick had many and more reasons to dislike the leader of the Sanctuary jerks. He couldn’t say he actually hated the man, no, that was saved for people threatening or hurting that which was his and Negan hadn’t done that. Yet. But he was a bully and a jerk and had far more power and influence than a man of his ilk should ever have. That made him dangerous.  
  
Unfortunately, it also made him and the Saviors the best possible ally Alexandria could hope for. A fact neither Michonne nor Daryl would let him forget.  
  
Oh, he remembered alright.  
  
But he didn´t have to like it.  
  
On their way to the gates they pumped into Tara and Judith, who from the looks of it, were out on a walk.  
  
“Dad, the batman is here!” Judith exclaimed the minute he saw him. She was holding on to Tara´s hand, but only barely. So exited she was.  
  
This was one of the things about Negan that annoyed the hell out of Rick. He himself really, really did not care for the guy, but for some reason both of his kids seemed very taken with him. Well, Judith, she liked everybody and they liked her back, but Negan was special. One could almost say he was her version of Santa Claus, such was the devotion given to him whenever he decided to show up. With Carl it was almost worse. He was friends with the guy.  
  
“Yeah, I know he is Jude. Just go inside with Tara, I’ll tell him you said hi, okay?”  
  
“But-“  
  
“ _Inside_ Judith.”  
  
Tara tugged the girl’s hand, gently. “Come on, Judith”, she said. “We have a book to finish, remember?”  
  
They went on their way and if Rick felt a little ashamed for how he had acted, he didn't let it show on his face.  
  
Negan and a couple of his guys were waiting by the gates with Abraham, Spencer and Tobin keeping an eye on them. Eugene was there too, like Sasha had said, but what he was doing was something other than guarding with the other three, unless he was checking if Negan’s gone had a bullet in it with the name of someone they knew.  
  
“Hiya Prick!” Negan hollered when he saw him coming. At first, something seemed odd about the man, but then Rick realized what it was. He wasn't wearing his leather jacket today, no, he had an actual winter coat on. And a hat. And a beard. Huh. Now he actually looked a little like some god damn Santa Claus.  
  
“You’re early”, Rick said, ignoring the man’s jolly greeting.  
  
“Yeah, well I’d love to say that winter is coming but the joke would totally be lost on you, wouldn´t it?”  
  
When he failed to answer, Negan just sighed and carried on. “Yeah, that´s what I thought. Besides, it’s already here anyway, so saying it would just be stupid. As to your rude-as-fuck greeting, yes, we came earlier than I said we would, but the thing is that we – meaning mostly me – decided it was time to put a start to this operation we’ve been chatting about, while it’s still possible, and that means we need the food we were promised. And possibly some bullets that your Doctor Smarty-pants there seems to know how to make.”  
  
Oh, Eugene….  
  
“The food was for the work you haven’t done yet and if you want to talk bullets then you better have something to offer in return”, Rick said. From the corner of his eye, he saw Michonne approaching them.  
  
“That’s so? Well, Prick, what can I say? My men are your men and so on. Whatever you need we sure as hell deliver, but right now we need some food for the journey. Aaaand we have some people with us who’d like to join you good people.” Negan’s smile was full of teeth. “They didn’t really fit in with us at the Sanctuary so I kind of promised you’d give them one of those nice little houses that you have so many here.”  
  
Michonne came to stand beside Rick. The man’s smile just widened. “Morning my lady”, he said, touching his brow with two fingers.  
  
“Negan”, Michonne nodded stiffly. “We weren’t expecting you.”  
  
“Figured as much. So, Prick, what do you think? Wanna lend a hand to some fellow survivors?”  
  
“No. Not really.”  
  
He understood why someone wouldn’t want to live at the Sanctuary – he’d seen what it was like there and he knew what kind of people Negan’s men were – but heck if he could trust them enough to allow them in Alexandria. Negan didn’t do things like these from the goodness of his heart. There was a catch, yes, but what was it?  
  
“Uh, you’re cold as ice, Grimes! Damn, and here I thought you were the good guys. My mistake.”  
  
“Rick”, Michonne whispered, laying a hand on his shoulder, “maybe we should-“  
  
“I said no.”  
  
The hand disappeared but the stare he got more or less told him he might be spending the following night in the guestroom. Michonne didn’t like her advice to be ignored when it came to decision making. Not at least over something like this.  
  
“Come on, man. People are people, I thought you needed some working hands around here.”  
  
“Oh, I do need them. Just like I need them to leave when the job is done. You can keep your _fine_ fellows to yourself.”  
  
Negan seemed far too amused after having his plea rejected.  
  
“So what, you’re throwing them out?” he asked, emphasizing his words with one of his stupid back leans. “They have kiddies, you know? About your darling little Jude’s age, If I’m not mistaken – which I hardly ever am. You gonna throw little people out there on the cold, Rick?”  
  
Oh, fuck you.  
  
“You might wanna talk to their leader at least, she’s- hold on.” Negan got interrupted by the commotion behind them. Someone was trying to get in, past the group of saviors who’d been waiting for orders outside by their cars. Rick thought the newcomer might be Morgan or maybe Carol, but no. It was not either of them. It was Carl.  
  
So then… is this what it means when he says he’s going _out_? Damn that kid.  
  
And there came Enid too. And Eric. And Aaron? Rosita? Why the heck was half of his people outside the gates without him knowing about it? Or Michonne for that matter. Had she at least known the kids were going out she would have told him _after_ telling them off for even thinking about it.  
  
But why would… okay, great. There was Daryl too. Just amazing – not that surprising though. Daryl more or less lived in the woods nowadays. Had the kids been with him, Rick would’ve been okay with it, but again, _Daryl_ would have told him about it. If he had to take a guess, he’d say they’d run into each other while being out at the same time doing god knows what.  
  
“You making the rounds now, officer One-Eye”, Negan grinned, tapping the brim of Carl’s hat with the head of his trademark bat. “Keeping an _eye_ on things?”  
  
“If you’d come when you were supposed to you’d have gotten more time to come up with better eye jokes”, Carl laughed, pushing the bat away from his face. His smile faltered, however, when his gaze met with Rick’s. He knew he wasn’t supposed to go outside, at least not without a good reason and even then he had to tell someone. Be it Rick, Michonne, Daryl or even Eugene.  
  
At some point, Rick was going to have let the boy be the adult he already kind of was, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be this particular day.  
  
“ _Inside_ , Carl.” There were many things he wanted to say to the boy, but this was the only one he’d suffer that jerk with the bat to hear. He was already drowning him in offhand parenting advices – when he wasn’t outright mocking his parenting skills – and he didn’t wish to give the man any more ammunition than he already had. “You too, Enid.”  
  
“I… okay, yes. I’m going”, Carl said, glanced at Negan who mouthed a silent ‘sorry’ at him and left, dragging his friend with him. That left Rick with Daryl, Aaron and Eric. Rosita had casually fled the scene the moment she’d seen Sasha and Abraham.  
  
“Everything okay here?” Aaron asked, eying the saviors around them.  
  
“Yeah, it’s fine.”  
  
“It would be more than fine if Rick here would listen to reason once in a while.”  
  
Daryl, who’d so far been silently watching and listening, looked at him now, questioning.  
  
“Negan, he… he brought some people with him”, Rick tried to explain without sounding too exasperated. “A family who’d like to stay here with us, in Alexandria. You didn’t happen to see them out there?”  
  
“There was a woman with a baby”, Daryl said, glancing at Aaron for confirmation. “Two older kids too.”  
  
“That’s them.” Negan took a couple of steps to stand beside the archer – either he was taller than Rick had expected or Daryl was way smaller than he’d thought ‘cause the side difference between the two was ridiculous – and dropped his voice to something akin to a stage whisper: “Did they seem particularly dangerous to you, Daryl?”  
  
“Any mother with a baby is dangerous when cornered”, Daryl reminded the man, like the bat near his face wasn’t worrying him one bit. Sure, it was just resting against Negan’s shoulder at the moment, but even so, it was in Rick’s mind too close to not be something to worry about. “But yeah, they seemed okay, I guess.” This, he said to Rick, who still wasn’t convinced.  
  
“You’d trust them?”  
  
Daryl just shrugged, which wasn’t really helping his decision making. Still, had the archer been against the idea he would have said it. So…  
  
“We’ll talk about it later, okay?” he told Negan. “But first, you and I are gonna sit down to talk about that food you’re so eager to take from us, yes?”  
  
“Fine, fine, but don’t forget the bullets.”  
  
“I didn’t forget. In fact, your men can start paying for them right now”, Rick said starting to actually smile. He might not be in a position where getting Negan to heel was a possibility, but his men were another thing entirely. “By shoveling the snow off the streets.”  
  
The silence that followed was a long one.  
  
“You heard the man”, Negan finally said to the savior standing not far behind him. “Be a good girl and tell the others they can start looking for shovels.”  
  
“Here’s to hoping they’ll not shoot the messenger”, was the muttered answer. The woman was so bundled up it was hard to tell who she was, but since she was here with Negan and not with the others, it was safe to assume she was Arat. Or maybe Regina. No, wait, she was one of the outpost leaders, wasn’t she? Arat it is, then.  
  
“That reminds me, no guns for anyone either”, he called out after her.  
  
“You got it, boss.”  
  
“Now that that’s settled, shall we start then?” Negan asked. “I mean I know it’s not even that cold but I’m freezing my nuts off here, so could we go somewhere warm, maybe. Like inside?”  
  
“Right”, Rick said, pretending he didn’t see the grin that had found its way onto Daryl’s face. “This way then.” He turned, urging Michonne to come with them.  
  
“Come along, Daryl”, he heard Negan say and when he turned around to look the man had already grabbed on to the archer’s arm. “This concerns you too.”  
  
“Since when?” Daryl was asking, as he was being pulled back to their direction. From the looks of it he’d been trying to leave with Aaron and Eric instead of coming with them to the meeting.  
  
“Since _now_ , I just had the greatest idea I would like to talk to you about so on with it, man. This coat is so not as warm as it looks like.”  
  
“But-“  
  
“No buts, I hate buts – wait no, no I don't. You know what I meant. Lead the way Prick, we’re just behind you.”  
  
Rick did as was asked, not really even thinking about it. The way Daryl let himself be manhandled by Negan didn’t sit well with him, mainly ‘cause it was so weird. Daryl didn’t let just anyone touch him, and the fact that he wasn’t doing anything about it now either meant that he was too afraid or disconcerted to act – which didn’t really sound like Daryl in any way – or he just wasn’t that bothered by it. Again, not like Daryl.  
  
The simplest answer to all of this was, of course, that Daryl – like Carl –had at some point made friends with the guy. When the hell had _that_ happened?  
  
  
  
The meeting went as well as it could, when the main talkers at the thing were Rick and Negan. Michonne offered some advice here and there, but kept otherwise mostly to herself. That had been Daryl’s plan too, but Negan apparently had other ideas.  
  
The whole point of the meeting was to talk about his oncoming trip to find new community sites that they could all benefit from. Alexandria, Sanctuary, Hilltop, Kingdom – all of them. Negan was the one leading this search, but the point of the matter was that this was something the communities were doing together.  
  
The Sanctuary leader had more cars and more people than the rest of them put together, but he didn’t have the food or the tools or the knowhow necessary to build what they had in mind, so yeah, cooperation was needed from everyone.  
  
The problem was, Negan wanted to speed things up because of the snow. Rick wasn’t that crazy about the idea, ‘cause some of the people from Kingdom that were supposed join the search group hadn’t returned from a run yet or were otherwise unavailable. It would have been ideal to have about the same amount of men from all communities, like had been discussed with the other community leaders, but Negan more or less talked him out of it. After having done that, he’d asked Daryl to join them.  
  
Only he hadn’t outright asked him.  
  
What he’d actually said was: “Would it be okay if I borrowed Daryl to do some hunting for us? He’d be more of use to me than he is to you any way.”  
  
Michonne had had to drag Negan out of the building so that Rick wouldn’t accidentally kill him. Daryl had stayed behind, mainly to keep the man from going after them, but also to make sure that he was okay. It was safe to assume that he’d already been close to the end of his fuse before that stupid remark had set him off but reaction like this was still something to worry about.  
  
  
  
“You have a death wish or something?” Daryl asked later, when they were sitting on Aaron and Eric’s porch, sharing a cigarette. He’d spent the last couple of hours trying to calm Rick down and stopping him from calling the whole thing off altogether and having succeeded in at least the former he now had it in his mind to get Negan to apologize. Or to at least talk to Rick again. Or something. “You keep poking him like that he’s gonna bite your fingers off.”  
  
Or a piece of your throat.  
  
“Nah, it’s good for him in the long run, him and his Messiah complex”, Negan said, playing with the handle of his knife while waiting for his turn. “It’s not healthy for everyone around you to worship the ground you walk on. Don’t even try to deny it, Daryl, I’ve seen the way you fawn over him.”  
  
There were many ways to describe Daryl’s relationship with Rick but fawning had never been one of them. Well, not in his mind anyway. Merle of course might have disagreed. And about that Messiah complex, Negan should maybe get himself a mirror.  
  
“So you’re teasing him ‘cause it’s good for him? Fuck off, you’re not that good a person.”  
  
“Well, it is fun too.”  
  
“Figures. Here.”  
  
“Thanks”, Negan took the cigarette offered to him – what was left of it anyway. “You know what I think it is you’re doing here? In Alexandria? I think you’re playing house. Yeah, you heard me. That’s how it seems to me and that’s how I think. This way of living it ain’t gonna last and you know that.”  
  
“Maybe”, Daryl said, looking at the man’s face, trying to catch his eyes. Negan might have had one of the best poker faces he’d ever seen – and the man himself seemed to think so too – but he happened to have very expressive eyes. If you knew what to look for you probably found it in there too, _if_ you got him to look at you. Not that he knew exactly what it was that he wanted to see.  
  
He couldn’t help but wonder if the man was actually worried about them.  
  
“Maybe they are, but I’m not. Playing house, that is.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Yeah. And if they wanna keep on playing, I’ll make it so that they can.” As long as it made them happy, made Rick, Judith and Carl happy, he was okay with it too. “You should try to talk to Rick again. He really wants this to happen, even if he doesn’t say so.”  
  
“I know”, Negan answered, after a while. “I want it too. For my people at least. I did mean what I said, though, I’d like you to come too. You have a useful skillset. Plus there’s the fact that I’m not that into working with people I know shit about – especially in a situation like this – and from the looks of it there’s _no one_ I know in the group beside my own people and some girls from Hilltop. I’d really, really appreciate the company. ”  
  
“Can’t.” The proposition was tempting and in any other circumstances he would’ve most probably taken it too. “Maggie’s about to pop any day now and I ain’t gonna miss it. So yeah, no thanks.”  
  
This seemed to actually throw the man off. “She is?” he asked. “I mean I knew she had some Korean buns in the oven but I didn’t think they’d been there that long. She’s so _small.”_  
  
True enough. At least if you compared her current size to what Lori had been during her last days. And she, like Maggie, had been a slender little woman. Maggie might have muscled up a bit, but she was anything but big. Even while pregnant.  
  
“I think she’s actually late.”  
  
“You _think?_ ”  
  
“I’m not sure she is, but it feels like she’s been pregnant like for over a year now. “ That’s how long it had felt to Daryl anyway. “They told us about it one day and about a month ago they said soon is gonna be the big day yet nothing has happened and I do _not_ have the nerve to ask her what’s taking so long.”  
  
It took him a while to notice that Negan was actually laughing at him, instead of just randomly coughing, like he’d first thought.  
  
“Yeah, you might find it funny now but wait ‘til it’s one of your wives that’s pregnant, you ain’t gonna be laughing then. Jerk.”  
  
Why that hadn’t happened yet, was a miracle in itself. One sexually active Negan + five young and fertile females should’ve at some point lead to some little baby Negans. Unless the girls had come to the conclusion that their “husband” looked better spending his nights alone on his shiny leather couch than in bed with them.  
  
“I don’t know about that”, Negan said after having calmed down a bit. “I do know when to shoot and when not, but thank you for your concern. Sherry’s been asking after you, by the way. She says you owe her a cigarette.”  
  
“Does she now? Well, you can tell her I’ll gladly come and bring her a pack if only she keeps her end of the bargain and makes you shave that awful beard off.”  
  
“Dude, not cool.”  
  
“Sorry.” That’s what you get for joining the fucking beard brigade, though. Have fun with Rick, Jesus and Aaron.  
  
No, Daryl was not jealous. He liked his little beard just fine, thank you very much.  
  
“So how long do you think you’ll be gone?”  
  
“Don’t know. Two to three months, maybe.”  
  
“And you think Rick’s gonna give you the bullets?”  
  
Or the knowledge to make them. He had a hunch that was not gonna happen though, not after that fucking fiasco of a meeting.  
  
“I hope so. Doesn’t matter really. If things go south with Rick we can always kidnap that guy with the weird hairdo and you guys can then come to beg them bullets from me.”  
  
“You really wanna do that? Eugene’s gonna eat you out of pickles.”  
  
Negan shrugged and aimed the last bits of the burned out cigarette to the bucket they’d taken to fill to role of an ash tray. He missed, cursed and rose up to pick the thing from the ground. “I’m not trying to burn your happy little village down if that’s what you’re thinking”, he said dropping the remains to the bucket and returned to sit by his side.  
  
All this sitting didn’t really keep Daryl warm, but he was too lazy to do anything about it. There was nothing else to do anyway. Going to back the woods to do some actual hunting wasn’t an option while there was saviors roaming behind the gates. Negan was relatively easy man to deal with, as long as Rick didn’t get involved, but some of his men were bound to cause trouble sooner or later, and he didn’t feel comfortable enough to leave them here while he himself was away.  
  
“What do you have against my beard?” Negan asked after a moment of pondering silence. While Daryl had been trying to come up with things to do, the older man had apparently been worrying over his overgrown facial hair.  
  
“You look like fucking Moses with it.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“.....”  
  
“ Well we already have a Jesus to go with it, don’t we?”  
  
Daryl snorted.  
  
“So we have a Jesus and a Moses. Does that make Rick God?”  
  
“I was gonna say the Devil, but sure, God is fine too.”  



	3. Photos, babies and music boxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby boy Rhee is born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait! I got stuck watching Supernatural. Went in for Jeffrey Dean Morgan, stayed for Misha Collins =)

  
Negan did get his bullets without having to even pay for them in any particularly way, unless you counted delivering a doctor of shorts straight to their doorstep as payment.  
  
Rick took his time in calming down and meanwhile Michonne and Denise had met with the new people who’d come to them with Negan and by the time Rick himself got to meet them, they’d been more or less accepted already.  
  
The leader of the group was a short, black haired woman called Moira. She wasn’t a doctor per say, but she had knowledge of medical plants and of their usage. She’d also had a friend who’d taught her a thing or two about farming, but apparently that friend of hers hadn’t made it past the outbreak.  
  
Nevertheless, she had – like Negan had said about Daryl – a very useful skillset.  
  
In addition to Moira, there were eight more people in the group. A couple with a baby and one older kid, three boys who were all about the same age - about twenty or so, was Daryl’s guess when he saw them. And then there was one kid they’d picked up from the road.  
  
Daryl had no intentions of befriending any of them whatsoever, but he did notice that all of the older boys seemed to have pretty good knowledge on how to use a bow or a slingshot and they knew how to move outside.  
  
Useful.  
  
The oldest of the group, the man, also had a sword on him. Or he’d had a sword. Naturally, they’d had to hand over all of their weapons at the gates. They’d get them back when Rick deemed them ready, but not before.  
  
All in all they seemed good, capable people. Able to adapt.  
  
Why then had Negan turned them down?  
  
“It’s not that I didn’t want them”, the man had said when he asked him about it. “Fuck, the little lady’s a fucking doctor and the boys all know how to fight. But one of them boys, that frigging tall one with the red hair – Randy something or other – suffers from some pretty bad ass claustrophobia. He literally could not stand it in the Sanctuary, so for his sake, they all packed up and started on leaving. Had I not found out about it they’d be out there somewhere now, being of no use to anyone. So, since we were already coming here I decided to take them along. Leave them somewhere close. “  
  
Daryl would have berated the man for speaking about other people like that, had he not done it himself when estimating their value to his own group.  
  
That was the way of the world now, though, sad as it was to say.  
  
Oh, how the mighty have fallen and all that.  
  
Not that Daryl himself had ever been that high on the ladder of civilization but still.  
  
They were asked to come to Hilltop a couple of days or so after Negan had left. Daryl was happy for Maggie, of course, but not too terribly excited about the trip ahead.  
  
They were all going.  
  
Him and Rick and the kids. Michonne. The rest of the group including somewhat reluctant Rosita. Tara was coming too - but without Denise. Aaron and Eric, even though invited, were also staying behind to watch over the new people.  
  
Or that’s what they’d told Rick anyway.  
  
“This is more of a family thing, don’t you think?” Had been Aaron’s somewhat amused answer to Daryl’s plea for them to come too.  
  
He’d come to collect some things from his room – a present of sorts for Maggie and the baby, for one – and couldn’t make himself leave before another try. “Me and Eric can come and see the little one some other time.”  
  
“But…” you’re family too.  
  
That’s what he’d been about to say, but it wasn’t really true now, was it? The group had been a family – the only one he’d ever had – but the group didn’t exist anymore.  
  
If Aaron and Eric couldn’t count themselves as family to Maggie and Glenn, what right did Daryl have to do that?  
  
Him and Maggie were as close as ever but him and Glenn… that was another thing entirely.  
  
The relationship they’d formed during that first winter after the farm hadn’t been the same after the prison.  
  
After Merle and the Governor.  
  
Glenn had never forgiven him for leaving when they needed him the most, for choosing Merle instead of them, while Daryl himself thought that the way the boy had handled things afterwards, especially with Rick, had been unforgivable.  
  
Not that they’d ever really talked about it. Things happened, people died, and petty little quarrels didn’t have a place in all that.  
  
But Daryl hadn’t forgotten.  
  
He’d left them, yes, that was on him. But it had been on _Glenn_ to look after Rick, to take care of him. And he had failed. From what Hershel had told him later, Daryl gathered the boy hadn’t even tried.  
  
Still, Glenn was one of them, one of his. Up until Alexandria anyway. Now he was going to have to see him again, god damn it.  
  
The one good thing about Maggie giving birth in Hilltop instead of Alexandria had been that Daryl and Glenn didn’t have to pretend that everything was fine between them.  
  
Damn this peace and quiet didn’t suit Daryl at all. When he didn’t have to actively worry for the lives of his friends he had more than enough time to become the jerk he’d been raised to be. Outdoor cat and all that.  
  
“Fine then, I’ll tell them you said hi.”  
  
“Please do.” Aaron said. “Paul also, if you don’t mind.”  
  
“Aaron here fancies our longhaired ninja man, you see”, Eric explained, making his – husband? Daryl hadn’t thought to ask and neither of them had no rings in their hands – blush in embarrassment.  
  
“I do not!”  
  
“Oh, please. Had he been a celebrity of some kind in the old world you’d be outright fanboying him from here to Canada”, Eric said, with no detectable jealousy in his voice. “No need to look at me like that, I am not worried over your little crush, don’t you worry. You’re not exactly his type, anyhow.”  
  
“Firstly, I do not have a crush on him and secondly… yeah, you’re probably right. Fighter that he is, I’d say his more into-“  
  
“I’ll be going then”, Daryl said, making a move for the door. Conversations like this might seem innocent at first and then blow up in your face when you least expected it.  
  
“Be safe, Daryl”, Aaron called after his retreating back. “And look after Rosita while you’re at it. Maybe keep her away from sharp and pointy things when Abraham’s around.”  
  
“I ain’t no babysitter”, Daryl grunted, closing the door after him.  
  
“I think we might have made him a teeny bit uncomfortable”, Aaron smirked.  
  
“You don’t say.”  
  
  
xxx  
  
  
Daryl had seen the framed photographs on the mantel piece the other day too, at the “party” he’d been more or less forced to attend to, but only now did he actually have time to examine them.  
  
There was one of Carl and Judith, another of just Judith. Then there was the classic family photo with all three of them, Rick’s hand on smiling Michonnes’s shoulder, Carl holding Judith.  
  
Playing house indeed.  
  
“Aaron took those”, said Rick, who'd come to stand beside him.  
  
“Yeah, I figured.”  
  
The man had asked to take one of him too, once or twice.  
  
“We were thinking of a group photo of sorts. Of all of us.” Rick was scratching the back of his neck. “I think it would be nice.”  
  
“I’m sure. You can count _me_ out, though.”  
  
“Come on, Daryl. It’ll be fun. We’ll even find you a tuxedo if that’s what you want. And a tie to go with it, of course.”  
  
“You’re joking.”  
  
“Would you prefer a bow?” asked Tara.  
  
She’d been launching on the couch, waiting, but was now sitting up and looking way too interested to Daryl’s liking.  
  
“He _is_ a bow man”, Rick said with a chuckle.  
  
“That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.”  
  
“Oh my god, I can see it already. Can I wear one too?”  
  
“First we have to find them but sure, why the hell not. No sunglasses though, too FBI.”  
  
“Damn…”  
  
Daryl pinched the bridge of his nose. A hunting trip was clearly in order. A long one. Just to be sure. Others could take all the photos they liked while he was away.  
  
“Plus you’re gonna have to help me force Daryl into one. He’s not gonna do it willingly.”  
  
Maybe he should move to Kingdom. Ezekiel might need help with fixing up the place. And Carol would be close. Yeah, Kingdom it is.  
  
“Into one what?” Michonne asked, coming down the stairs with Judith in her arms, all ready to go. Carl was right behind her.  
  
“A tuxedo”, Rick said. “For the group photo.”  
  
“Oh yes, I’d like to see that.”  
  
“Yeah, well ain’t gonna happen.” Daryl glanced at the photos once more, harrumphed, and turned to leave. “Are we going or what?”  
  
“Yes we are, aren’t we?”  
  
What? Oh, Rick was talking to Judith. God, the man had become such a daddy. Daryl thought it was a bit scary but according to Carol, that was how good fathers usually behaved.  
  
He had to assume she’d meant some other daddies than her own ex-and-now-dead-hubby, though. Damn it would have been good to get to kill the man himself, or better yet, see Carol kill him. At least she got to bash his head in later – not that she’d been able to enjoy the deed at the time. She’d been a different woman back then.  
  
“Okay, hey, m’gonna go then, me and Rosita are on bikes so-“  
  
“Wait, no, shouldn’t we all go together?” Michonne asked, looking at Rick. “Didn’t you talk to him about it? You didn’t, did you.”  
  
Daryl narrowed his eyes.  
  
“Talk to me about what?”  
  
Rick was looking _reaaally_ uncomfortable.  
  
“Since we’re a little low on gas we should, you know, not use the cars so much. Or bikes.”  
  
“Or bikes”, Daryl repeated, defeated. “All in the van then, huh?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Okay, fine, amazing. Rosita was going to throw a fit.  
  
She didn’t actually. But damn was she frosty. Not that Daryl was feeling that much better.  
  
Tara was sitting beside him, happy as a clam, but then there was Sasha, who kept trying to smile at Rosita – no luck with that – Abraham, who tried not to look at anyone, Carl, who was hiding behind a lapful of Judith and Eugene who was just lost in his own genius of a head and didn’t pay any attention to anyone else. A bit like Enid, but she wasn’t so much lost as she was sulking for having to travel with them.  
  
Rick, of course, was driving the van with one hand and fondling Michonne’s thigh with the other.  
  
Daryl sighed, wishing he was somewhere else. All this drama did nothing to improve his mood.  
  
What did improve his mood, was seeing Carol waiting for them by the gates when they arrived in Hilltop.  
  
Daryl, being the last one out the car of Hell, was also the last one to greet her, which was just fine, since he’d been thinking of stealing her away for a smoke anyway.  
  
After hugging her tight, of course.  
  
“I’m planning on stopping, you know”, she told him when they were away from the others, counting their cigarettes.  
  
“That’s what Negan keeps telling me too, but so far it’s been nothing but talk. Damn it. Do you have a lighter? Mine’s gone missing.”  
  
He would have suspected Carl to be the culprit since the kid had a history of taking his stuff, but he really didn’t see what the boy would have needed his lighter for. Not for smoking, that’s for sure. Carl knew better than to anger his dad with stupid stunts like that. Then again, he had gone out without permission…  
  
“He doesn’t have a king yapping in his ear about it now, does he?” Carol asked, smiling.  
  
“Heh, not that I know of.” Sanctuary had no kings other than the big man himself. “Ezekiel giving you hard time about it, then?”  
  
“Not really, he just worries for my health. It’s kind of nice actually.”  
  
“What, that he’s worried?”  
  
“That he’s worried over something like _that_ ”, Carol clarified. “Can you imagine either of us to even _think_ about health issues and such that come with smoking a year or two ago?”  
  
Daryl gave her a slop sided smirk. “I’m still not thinking about them.”  
  
“Well you should.”  
  
“Maybe”, he said. “Or maybe I’ll just stop when we finally run out.”  
  
Cigarettes were already harder and harder come by. Soon there was really going to be none left. Unless someone decided to start growing tobacco, but that didn’t seem very likely, not with a weather like this, not with this much snow. Fuck, it was like they were in Finland or something.  
  
“How’s Maggie?”  
  
“She’s fine”, Carol said. “Glenn too… well, more or less. He’s being anxious enough for both of them. I think he’s scared.”  
  
Daryl would be too if their roles were reversed.  
  
“She’s gonna pull through”, he said, not daring to even think otherwise. “She’s tough.”  
  
Carol nodded, not saying anything.  
  
They both knew being tough wasn’t always enough – just look what happened with Lori – but things were different now. They’d had a doctor to watch over Maggie during this whole god-damn-long-pregnancy, they had medicine, they had walls, they had baby-stuff. Everything was gonna be just fucking fine.  
  
  
xxx  
  
  
Little baby boy Rhee was born during the very same day they’d arrived, albeit just barely – it was almost midnight – and everything went just fine. Maggie was tired but happy, Glenn was downright hysterical but also happy. Fuck, they were all happy. Daryl too. He just hoped this surprisingly successfully performed venture didn’t encourage anyone else of the group’s love birds to set up a bakery any time soon.  
  
“He’s adorable”, Michonne told Maggie the next morning, admiring the bundled up baby in the woman’s arms. It had been the first thing she’d said when she saw him earlier that night, but she kept saying it again and again. Rick was right there with her, sitting on the foot of Maggie’s bed, smiling.  
  
Maggie, who’d just woken up from her the-baby-is-out-and-I’m-going-to-sleep-while-I-still-can-nap, smiled proudly.  
  
“Do you have a name?”  
  
Somehow no one had thought to ask that before now.  
  
“Yeah”, Maggie said, looking at her finally calm husband. “Yeah we do.”  
  
“His name is Hershel”, Glenn said and reached out to pet the baby’s head. “We decided on it pretty soon after finding out we were waiting. It seemed appropriate.”  
  
It was, too. Appropriate. But damn if hearing the name didn’t make Daryl wince, just a little bit. He missed the old man Greene more than he had realized. Carol, who was sitting beside him on the couch they’d conquered with Jesus and Tara, leaned in to speak to him when the baby was given to Michonne’s eager arms.  
  
“Someone might just be suffering from a pretty serious case of baby fever.”  
  
Daryl closed his eyes and sighed. He was starting to suffer from it too and not in the nice way. Carol just chuckled and patted his arm.  
  
After Hershel had been passed around enough to everyone’s satisfaction – Daryl had declined the offer but Judith had gladly taken his share too – they let Maggie and Glenn have some family time with the baby and more or less scattered around the main house at the top of the hill.  
  
Now that they had some time on their hands, Daryl showed Carol and Jesus the present he had gotten for Maggie. Well not he, precisely, the whole thing had been more Carl’s idea and he had helped by taking the boy to the Sanctuary to do a little shopping. They’d kind of done it behind Rick’s back, too, but it had been for a good cause so Daryl didn’t feel too bad about it.  
  
“It’s beautiful”, Carol praised, examining the wooden little box in her hands.  
  
“What is it?” Jesus asked. “A jewelry box?”  
  
“For a baby?” Daryl snorted. “Don’t be stupid. It’s a god damn music box.”  
  
“Oh… you been to Russia, lately?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing, nothing… here, let me see it too.”  
  
The music box was smaller than the one Maggie had given to Judith and it didn’t come with one legged dancing girls, but Daryl thought it was nice nonetheless.  
  
“We got it from the Sanctuary, only cost us a flash light and tube of toothpaste. Took a while to find it, though. They have way too much crap over there.”  
  
“Did you listen to it already?”  
  
“Yeah, was a bit sad maybe but I think Mags is gonna like it. There’s a picture of a bunny on it too. Baby’s like bunnies, don’t they?”  
  
“I like bunnies too”, Carol informed him. “Just so you know. And not to eat… well, no, to eat too, but I mean I like things like these if you’re, you know, in a gift buying mood. Something nice for a little ol’ Carol? Hmm?”  
  
“You get your own baby and we’ll talk.”  
  
“Fine, me and Zeke’ll get right to it when I get home. I promise to give you updates every now and then.”  
  
".....”  
  
Daryl was starting to wonder if Kindgom wasn't a safe place for him to stay at after all.  



	4. Hiding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daryl and Rosita have a little chat and Carl is worried. So is Judith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short one. Mentions of suicide, not any known character.

  
Winter had hit hard on Alexandria, nearly drowned it in snow, but people in Hilltop were facing another problem entirely. They had snow, sure – who _didn’t_ nowadays – but real, actual houses to stay in? Not so much. Well, with the exception of the main house, of course, the Barrington House. And now they were all pretty much staying there, at least during night time. All of them.  
  
Needless to say, it got pretty crowded pretty quick.  
  
Daryl had managed to find one empty room to spend his time in. Jesus, who’d passed by a minute ago on his way to get more blankets to the big room with the fireplace, had told him that it was just one of those rooms no one really liked to sleep in. It was too big and too cold and it kind of smelled a bit funny.  
  
Plus there had been that suicide a month or two ago. The one they’d all heard about. Someone had decided it was good enough time to introduce their brains to the little flowers of the room’s worn out wallpaper. Yeah. Daryl could understand why the residents of the house wanted to stay away from the room, but did it bother him? Not really. He hadn’t known the poor bastard.  
  
He was sitting on the window sill enjoying some long needed rays of sunshine when Rosita came barging in, banging the door closed so hard that the painting closes to her almost fell down. It would have been a shame too. Daryl had examined it closely before settling in and actually liked it. Morning in the Blue Ridge Mountains it was called, at least that’s what the bronze plaque on the wall beside it said.  
  
“The fuck are you raving at?” he asked, fighting back a yawn. The sun was making him sleepy, even if it was so far from warm that it wasn’t even funny.  
  
“Nothing”, Rosita answered, not even trying to hide that she was angry. “Nothing, everything’s just… _peachy_.”  
  
The last word was spat out, harshly, and – if Daryl wasn’t mistaken – with some actual spit. He opted not to say anything, though. He didn’t know what he _could_ say nor did he really care to stick his nose where it wasn’t needed or wanted.  
  
“Got in a fight with Sasha”, Rosita finally explained , eyeing the leftover brain stain on the wall with disdain. “Tara send me here to cool my head off.”  
  
“Tara did?”  
  
That meant Rick hadn’t been around then. The man was usually more off than on the leader mode, but any kind of hassle or tussle between the people under his care was still met with zero tolerance. Be it lover’s quarrel or not.  
  
Rosita just hummed, not meeting his eyes. She was still looking at the stain on the wall, as if it was the most interesting thing in the whole room filled with paintings of various landscapes. Daryl glanced at it too, wondering if the woman knew the history behind it. That it wasn’t just any water damage stain or some random spill of some sort of liquid.  
  
“Did you know almost nobody here knew her name?” She asked after a good deal of scrutinization.  
  
Apparently she did.  
  
“I didn’t even know she was a she.”  
  
He _had_ been thinking about a man, though, mainly ‘cause the whole ordeal reminded him of a book he’d been reading in turns with Negan, a book where a boy saw things on the walls of a presidential suite. Things – in this case – being blood and brains. Of a man’s head. So, yeah. It’d been a male stain for him, up until this newly gained information anyway.  
  
“Well she was. A woman. I heard Maggie talking about it. Even Gregory hadn’t known where she was from or when she’d even come here, and he’s been boasting he knows just about everyone in Hilltop.” Rosita snorted. “Shows how much he knows.”  
  
“What was her name?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“You said _almost_. Before.”  
  
“Oh, right. Lucy. I believe it was Lucy. The old couple with the cat apparently knew her or of her or something. I don’t really know.”  
  
There were three identical chairs in the room, huddled around a matching gray couch. Rosita picked the one nearest the window to sit on and positioned it so that it was facing Daryl and the sunlight streaming over his shoulders. She sat there, one leg crossed over the other at the knee, wrapped in the blanked she’d brought with her to the room, looking a bit like a vicious, human sized burrito.  
  
“She’s dead and no one even cares”, she said, sounding angrier that she’d been when she first came in. “No one. How fucked up is that?”  
  
“Very”, Daryl said. “But that’s life ain’t it? Full of shit.”  
  
Some things at least hadn’t changed even if the world around them had. Still, it was sad. Daryl could admit that much, at least. He wondered if Lucy had been a loner by nature like him or if she’d been more like Michonne before Andrea. Or Rick after Lori. Or… well, not that it mattered one way or the other.  
  
“You’re not even trying to cheer me up, are you?” Rosita asked, burrowing more deeply into her blanket.  
  
“No need to. You’re such a bundle of joy already.”  
  
They fell silent after that. Rosita settled more comfortably on her chair, raised her legs up under the warmth of the blanket and closed her eyes. Apparently she wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon. Daryl sighed and looked away. Rosita was a nice girl and all, one of the few he could actually call a friend if he was in the mood. But she was no Carol.  
  
Carol had left earlier that day after a promise to Daryl that she’d be starting on making them babies with the king of the dreadlocks – people shared too much these days, was Daryl’s opinion – and he missed her already. He knew he was being pathetic and petty but he hated the way they were spread out all over the place, he really god damn hated it.  
  
_You wouldn’t be happy even if you were all together again_ , a voice in his mind whispered, _‘cause they’d be together by themselves and you’d be the odd man out. Like you always have been. Like you always will be_. The voice belonged to Beth but the words were Merle’s.  
  
Daryl felt compelled to ignore them both.  
  
The appearance of Carl roused him from his musings.  
  
“Can I come hide in here too?” The boy asked, closing the door behind him more gently than Rosita before had. No cool paintings endangered this time around.  
  
“We’re not hiding”, Rosita said without bothering to open her eyes. “We’re sunbathing.”  
  
“You piss of your dad again?” Daryl asked. He was pretty sure angering Rick was one of the only things Carl was really afraid anymore.  
  
“No”, Carl said, but then shook his head. “Yes. Kind of. We both did actually.”  
  
“The fuck did I do?”  
  
“Took me to Sanctuary for starters.”  
  
Oh, that. He’d been wondering when Rick would ask them about the bunny box. He’d said nothing at the time, presumably not wanting to make a scene before Maggie and Glenn, but he’d had that look Daryl knew from earlier experience. That very same look that had been given to him whenever Rick was thinking of giving him a talk.  
  
“Is he angry?”  
  
“Didn’t stick to find out”, Carl admitted. “Michonne was talking about it with Abraham and I just happened to overhear. Was kind of thinking of avoiding him until he calms down or, you know, forgets or something.”  
  
Yeah, well that’s not gonna happen any time soon.  
  
Rosita lowered her legs on the floor and stood up. “If the two of you are on his hit list then this girl is better of somewhere else.”  
  
She patted Carl’s shoulder on her way to the door but didn’t get a chance to actually open it before it was done for her by someone else. From the looks of it, that someone was very small since she was looking down when she spoke. “If you’re looking for a safe haven for Rick’s victims-to-be then you’re in a right place, young missy.”  
  
And then she was gone.  
  
Judith looked after her, puzzled look on her tiny face.  
  
“What?” she then asked.  
  
Carl just laughed.  
  
Daryl couldn’t help but smile a little himself. “You running from your dad too?” he asked.  
  
“Wasn’t running”, came the quick response. Judith wasn’t supposed to run inside the house and they all knew it. Just like they knew that she always did, anyway. And vigorously denied it afterwards, of course, if there was no witnesses.  
  
“I’m sure you weren’t.”  
  
Such a little liar, this girl of theirs, Daryl thought fondly. But only when it was about little, meaningless things. Like the running inside the house thing or hiding her vegetables during dinner. There’s another thing that hadn’t changed the least when the civilization shut down. Kids still didn’t like their vegetables. Excepts for tomatoes. If nothing else, Judith always ate her tomatoes. But try to give her a boiled carrot when she was cranky you might just be the beginner of an all-out war.  
  
Yeah, Shane might be her biological daddy but she was Rick’s kiddo all the way through.  
  
“You okay there, Jude?” Carl asked and when Daryl looked closer the girl did look a bit spooked. “You’re not _actually_ hiding from dad are you?”  
  
“I broke the wax flower thing down the corridor”, Judith confessed, suddenly looking like she was about to burst into tears. “The one that had those big blue butterfly flowers in it. I tried to turn it over to see what’s on the other side and it fell and it broke. Do you think king Gregory will be mad at me?”  
  
Judith had this weird way of thinking that if you were a leader of a community you must be a king since Ezekiel was a king too. Queen too was a possibility, since the leader of Oceanside was in fact, a woman. This kind of thinking didn't seem to reach Alexandria though, 'cause for her Rick was just a daddy. Daryl wasn't even sure if she was aware that her father was the closest thing they had to a leader in Alexandria.  
  
“He’s not a king Jude and no, I don’t think he cares about the flowers.”  
  
“But I made such a huge mess.”  
  
“We’ll go clean it up then, okay?” Carl said and offered his hand to her sister. “Come on, let’s go together. We can go see the baby again after, if you want.”  
  
Judith sniffed. “I would like that very much”, she said and they left. Daryl waved them goodbye and returned to enjoy the quiet calmness of Lucy’s room all by himself.  
  
Now, if he’d only stop dreading for Rick’s eventual Negan related interrogation, things would be – like Rosita had said – just peachy.  



	5. Change is in the air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discussions about Negan and about books.

  
To Daryl’s surprise Rick didn’t say anything about the bunny box or Negan. Not when he first saw him after the conversation with Carl – at the time he’d assumed the man was too busy looking for his wayward daughter and had no interest in dealing with him – not afterwards either, when they’d bumped into each other during dinner time. Or after that, by the gates. Or after _that_ , when they were leaving and he’d come to tell him Glenn, Maggie and Hershell would be returning to Alexandria later that month, if the weather didn’t get too bad.  
  
After that bit of information Rick’d just patted him on the shoulder and entered the car. Carl had come to Daryl then, wanting to know if his father had said anything.  
  
“Not about that”, Daryl had answered, knowing the boy wanted to know if he’d been interrogated about Negan already or if the storm was still on its way. “He hasn’t said anything.”  
  
“Maybe he isn’t bothered then?” Carl had suggested, sounding hopeful.  
  
Daryl wanted to believe that, he really did. He didn’t like fighting with Rick, that was one of the last things in this world he would willingly do, come hell or high water, but he especially did not want to fight about Negan. Yet they were _always_ fighting about Negan.  
  
Jesus had been the one to introduce their communities to one another. First he’s stumbled upon Rick and Daryl and stolen their soda machine and then, after a bit of him mostly kicking their asses ‘till their car had beaten him to unconsciousness before sinking to the bottom of a lake, they’d taken him to Alexandria and boy did he have a lot to tell them.  
  
He was the first person they’d met who was from another community – after Aaron that is, but at the time _they’d_ been a far cry from anything that could be called a community so that didn’t really count. Hilltop had and still did prosper. They had more food and less people. They had cows. And they had a deal with the Saviors. Food for Negan’s people, pretty much anything else for Hilltop’s residents. For a price of course, but Daryl didn’t know the details.  
  
They themselves didn’t meet the Saviors until later, after they’d been introduced – again, by Jesus – to Ezekiel and his people and by that time Rick had already started to despise even hearing the name Negan, as had the rest of the group, Daryl himself included. He’d thought the man’s “I am everywhere” bullshit had been just that, _bullshit_ , but he had to admit that as a play of domination it really got the job done.  
  
No one crossed Negan and got away with it. Sherry’s former partner had gotten his face burned for stealing and lying – or that’s what been told to Daryl anyway – and the the one holding the burning hot iron had been none other than Negan himself.  
  
They of course hadn’t known about that particular punishment at the time, hell, Rick still didn’t know about it, but what they _had_ heard had been bad enough for them to want nothing to do with the Saviors who, like cockroaches, suddenly seemed to be everywhere they went.  
  
That’d been roughly a year or so ago. Not a long time by the old world’s standards, but they’d had to learn to adapt and quickly at that. And adapt they did. Negan himself turned out to be a somewhat reasonable man to deal with. He didn’t kill if he didn’t have to and he was always honest about it. Negan didn’t lie or pretend to be something he wasn’t like the Governor had before Michonne’d driven him over the edge.  
  
Rick, though, was of the opinion that the man was dangerous and delusional and the less they dealt with him the better. Spencer had almost had a stroke when he’d heard Rick tell them about Negan and what kind of man he was. He’d still been laughing his ass off when Abraham and Glenn dragged him out of the church they’d been using as a gathering place and Daryl remembered hearing that chocked cackling through the walls even after the doors had been shut and the man left outside to cool off.  
  
It had been a long night.  
  
Not unlike the one this was threatening to turn into, Daryl thought. He was standing on the wooden look-out-stand by the wall and looking at the snow covered forest before him. Usually he liked these long nights spend alone on the wall, but tonight found him restless and edgy. It was their second night back in Alexandria and Rick still hadn’t said anything. At all.  
  
Daryl couldn’t help but think something was wrong. Even more so than he’d originally thought. Maybe taking Carl to the Sanctuary had been a mistake after all. He hadn’t thought so at the time, but he’d been keenly aware of the fact it wasn’t something Rick actually allowed. He wasn’t stupid. But he’d had a bad day and he hadn’t found it in himself to care when he’d been asked for a ride by Carl with that sad one-eyed stare of his. Which was, now that he thought about it, even worse. He’d taken his friend’s son to a place he knew the kid was forbidden to go and he’d done it purely out of spite. Because he’d been angry.  
  
Yeah.  
  
Maybe he really _was_ just stupid. Huh. He was going to blame Merle for that for being such an outstandingly bad role model for him after their mom died. It was a wonder he even knew how to read or write, really. To this day, he wasn’t sure where the fuck his brother himself had learned it all well enough to teach _him_ the basics, unless something he’d heard during his few days of school had actually stuck.  
  
When Aaron asked him later that night if he was okay he said he was fine, but he’s said it so often it had probably lost any meaning it might at some point in the past have had and was merely a reflex answer to a question he didn’t want or care to answer in all honesty. He didn’t know if Aaron knew this, but even if he did, he didn’t push and Daryl was grateful for that.  
  
But he _was_ fine, mostly.  
  
Just… on edge.  
  
When he saw Carl storming out of Rick’s house the next morning looking like someone had pissed on his favorite hat he knew something was up, but he decided to wait, just in case this was about something else. Like Carl not keeping his room clean or doing his chores or something stupid like that. Which didn’t really sound like Carl Grimes at all, but what did he know.  
  
It wasn’t about that.  
  
“You wanted to see me?” Daryl asked after Sasha, Tara and Morgan had left to do whatever it was they did nowadays, leaving him standing alone in the living room with Rick and Michonne. Sasha had been the one who’d come to tell him Rick wanted to speak with him and she’d returned with him to the house, supposedly to get Tara or something, but Daryl wasn’t so sure about that.  
  
It’d felt like escorting to him, or worse – babysitting. Like Daryl was some stupid little brat who’d run rather than face the consequences he knew were ahead of him, afraid of his father’s wrath.  
  
He might be stupid but he was _not_ a damn kid.  
  
“Yeah”, said Rick, who was sitting at the head of the table. He looked stiff and uncomfortable, like he didn’t want to be there. “I need to… I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I was _going_ to talk to you when we got back but then Morgan came and I just, kind of kept pushing this off and you know…” he rubbed his neck, glancing at Michonne who was hovering nearby, dutiful as ever. It was almost like _she_ was there to make sure _Rick_ didn’t decide to suddenly flee the scene or something.  
  
“This about Carl?”  
  
Rick nodded, not even trying to look at him. Daryl, for once, didn’t know what that meant. But he knew what he had to do, what he could do.  
  
“I’m sorry, man. I didn’t think it was such a big deal.” At the time he didn’t. Afterwards though? Different story.  
  
“I know”, Rick said. “I know. And I’m not angry. Well I was, at first, but not at you per se. Or Carl. I just... Daryl, you took Carl to the Sanctuary. To the… I don’t want him to go there. I don’t, I don’t like _you_ going there either, you know that.”  
  
“I know. But…” Daryl had a hard time thinking what to say next. On the one hand he could try to explain himself a little better, try to get Rick to understand _why_ he felt the factory was a safe place to take Carl to, especially when Negan was there to boss his men around. But on the other he’d rather just… promise to not do it again.  
  
He didn’t like explaining himself and he didn’t really know how to even justify his stupid ass decision to give Carl a ride. If he’d been alone with the man he might still have gone with the first option, but with Michonne there… yeah, no. To justify himself to Rick was one thing, but to Rick _and_ Michonne – another thing entirely.  
  
“He was safe with me.” There. Simple and true.  
  
This actually made Rick chuckle. Not laugh by any means but chuckle. To Daryl that was as good a win as any.  
  
“I know he was”, the man said, finally, _finally_ looking at him. “You of all people can keep him safe, I know that. He himself isn’t actually helpless and I know I’ve been, um, somewhat overprotective over him and Judith but-“  
  
“Somewhat, yes”, Michonne sighed, rolling her eyes fondly. “What Rick is trying to say – rather poorly at that – is that we don’t think its… _wise_ to interact with the Saviors. More than necessary, that is. Especially during winter time when people are more, you know, restless. Agitated.”  
  
“They’re not…” what? Dangerous? Daryl couldn’t really say that. Not about the Saviors anyway, most of them were more like Joe from the road than, for example Aaron – the kindest man Daryl had so far met, except maybe for Maggie’s father - but the people living and working at the factory were okay. Negan was okay. As long as you… played by his rules.  
  
A thought came to him then.  
  
“You saying we shouldn’t be in contact with them?” He knew Rick had been thinking about it from the beginning, no matter how useful the deal with the Saviors turned out to be. But he’d been under the impression that they couldn’t, no, that _Alexandria_ couldn’t afford to lose that deal.  
  
“I’m saying it might be better to keep the relationship between our communities…”, Rick paused for a moment, glanced at the ceiling like he was searching it for the word he wanted to use. “Professional”, he finally said. The frown that immediately followed made it clear that he wasn’t exactly happy with the wording now that he’d actually heard it but was going to stick with it none the less.  
  
Professional, huh. Daryl wasn’t exactly happy with it either. He’d never been professional about anything in his life. What did it even mean? No flirting with the Saviors? He was pretty sure that wasn’t a problem with any of them, though. Carl was only really friendly with Negan and he himself didn’t flirt period, so Rick probably didn’t mean _that_ , which only left one option left.  
  
“You told Carl not to go to Sanctuary anymore.” At all, ever, effective immediately. Had Rick met Carl?  
  
“It was necessary”, Michonne tried to explain, but Daryl paid her no mind. He wasn’t here to talk to her.  
  
“What about Negan, Carl supposed to cut ties with him too?”  
  
“Well that would make _me_ sleep my nights better”, Rick said. This time there was actual laughter in his voice, it just wasn’t the nicest side of Rick raising its head. Huh. So that side of Rick still existed. “If only someone had the guts to off him now that he’s somewhat vulnerable for once. I’d give them a fucking medal.”  
  
“Rick, come on. Some of us are actually friends with the guy.”  
  
“Well I’m not exactly thrilled with your relationship with him either, Daryl. “ When he said his name it came out sounding almost hysterical. “What do you even see in him? He kills his own people for god’s sake!”  
  
“You’re not exactly a saint yourself, Rick”, Daryl said, wondering if the other man had forgotten what he’d been like when they first got to Alexandria, though what he’d said just a second ago kind of told otherwise. “None of us are.”  
  
“Things have changed.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Rick stood up, slowly like a man years older than he actually was, and came to stand before him. Daryl stared at the man’s boots – the old, battered ones – and waited. When had this talking thing become so hard?  
  
They’d been so long on the same page about, well, everything. Now though… now they weren’t and suddenly they couldn’t even _talk_ to each other without Daryl getting all gloomy and pathetic.  
  
He had a feeling Rick was about to ask something of him, something he’d sworn never to do again. Not after what he’d done for Rick when the man had told Carol to pack her bags and leave back at the Prison.  
  
“Daryl?”  
  
He raised his head, willing himself not to bite his lips so hard. They were actually starting to hurt. Rick waited, patiently, ‘till they were properly face to face before he started talking.  
  
“I’m just… worried, okay? I don’t want Carl to go there anymore. Not alone, not with you, just… not.”  
  
“I won’t take him.”  
  
You want me to jump? Just tell me how high.  
  
“I don’t want you to go there either.”  
  
That’s… yeah. Not jumping there, officer.  
  
“We cutting all ties then?” he asked. “Just like that?”  
  
“Not all the ties”, Michonne said when Rick started to shake his head. She’d come to stand beside him and was now looking at Daryl, pleading him to listen, to hear. “Not yet.”  
  
“We still have Simon to deal with after all”, Rick said. “But for now, I want no one to go to them apart from me and Michonne. If Negan comes back alive, it would be better to cool it with him too.“  
  
“Is that an order?”  
  
Rick tilted his head, looking a bit owlish. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Are you _ordering_ me not to go to Sanctuary? You gonna punish me if I go? Cut my rations?”  
  
“What? Daryl no, no one’s cutting anything. I just… I’m asking you not to go. I’m asking you. We don’t… we’re not like that anymore.”  
  
“All right”, Daryl said, hoisting his crossbow back on his shoulder. He was okay for now, but he deemed it better to make his exit before he actually got angry and said something he shouldn’t.  
  
“You’re _asking_ me? The answer’s no, then.”  
  
“Daryl-“  
  
“You heard me.”  
  
“No, Daryl, wait!”  
  
He was out the door before anything else could be said. He wasn’t angry, not exactly, but he didn’t like this new direction they were heading. Rick disliking Negan was one thing, but he fact that he actually seemed to want the man dead had been a surprise.  
  
Damn that big headed idiot of a man for poking Rick all the time.  
  
Rick didn’t approach him again after that, not for a while any way. They weren’t avoiding each other, they just… didn’t speak that much. Besides, Rick was busy enough to get in speaking terms with Carl again while keeping Judith entertained and happy which in turn made him easier for Daryl to quietly observe from a safe distance. Which he did, a lot.  
  
An issue with one particularly active herd brought them back to speaking distance of each other and pretty soon after that they were actually speaking again, just not about Negan or the Saviors. Daryl, it seemed, was given some leeway when it came to this new thing Rick and Michonne were trying out, but Carl certainly wasn’t.  
  
And it showed.  
  
The fights he and Rick had were becoming louder and louder, but at the same time so common that nearly no one paid any attention to them anymore. Daryl was worried, but not overly so. It wasn’t the first time Carl acted out and it wouldn’t be the last, that he was sure of. The kid was angry. He didn’t have many friends and his father was threatening to take away the ones he had, just cause Negan made him a bit antsy. Carl’s words, not his.  
  
Daryl, being the only other person in Alexandria who liked Negan, was the one the kid came to talk about these things. For some reason he was under the notion that Daryl could somehow make it all better. That if he just talked with Rick, the man might just change his mind.  
  
Yeah, well that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. He might have had Rick’s “ear” at some point, but not anymore. Things change and all that.  
  
Maggie and Glenn returned to Alexandria a couple of months later than they were originally supposed to. There had been some complications with the baby but he was fine now – not Daryl fine but _fine_ fine - and a month after them the one’s that had gone with Negan returned. Apparently things hadn’t gone as well as they’d hoped.  
  
Daryl had been helping Moira and Denise with moving some furniture around – that hadn’t been his intention when he came to talk to Denise about a run but apparently this Moira had a nag for effectively bossing people around without them noticing what she was doing before it was too late – when he heard that not only had there been some casualties for Hilltop and Sanctuary, Negan himself had managed to get hurt.  
  
“That was what Tammy was saying anyway”, Denise told him, referring to a woman who’d come to her with a broken arm. “She wasn’t sure what exactly happened, only that the Saviors had been frantically protective of him ever since.”  
  
“He… wasn’t bitten, was he?” Daryl asked, ‘cause that really wasn’t something he was looking forward to. A one legged Negan with a grudge, like he wasn’t easy to piss off already. Maybe if it’d only been a hand- no, wait, that would be worse. He needed those hands to handle Lucille.  
  
“No, nothing like that, I think.” Denise assured him. “No, she would have said something if there were any limbs cut off. I don’t- oh, shit, sorry, I forgot you two we friends. Are, _are_ friends. God dammit, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to, argh!”  
  
“…are _you_ okay?”  
  
“Yes I’m fine, I’m perfect, I’m just… I’m fine. Seriously.”  
  
Daryl hummed but didn’t say anything else on the matter. Partly ‘cause Denise would come to him if she needed to talk, but partly cause Moira was giving him that stinky eye again. Apparently she didn’t appreciate them unnecessary chatter when there was work to be done. Work, yes, like there was anything to be done that they actually needed him for. For the last half hour he’d been serving the role of a bookshelf for Denise who tried to come up with the best way to arrange all their books and materials so that Moira would be able to reach the ones most essential to her. She was very short.  
  
“So, Daryl, are you going to Sanctuary then?”  
  
“What? Yeah, I guess I am.” Daryl narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “Why? Do you need something?”  
  
“Weeell, I heard a rumor they have an actual library there nowadays?”  
  
“There are books”, Daryl confirmed, a little creeped out by the way Denise had started to rub her hands together. “It’s more of a book storage than a library but yeah, there is one. “  
  
“And you wouldn’t mind bringing me something?”  
  
At least Denise didn’t seem to have a problem with his trips to the Sanctuary.  
  
“Gimme a list, I’ll check what they have. And if we have apple jam or something, bring that too. Addy likes apples. “  
  
“Great!” Denise gave him a quick hug and then pushed him out of the room. “Now be good boy and go tell Rick that you’re leaving, he hates your disappearing acts. By the time you’re done, I’m sure I’ll have a list ready for you and you can come back and get it and then be on your merry way.”  
  
“Do not forget the jam”, Daryl reminded her before leaving the woman to search for a pen to go with her little slip of a paper. Suddenly she seemed all rainbows and sunshine again. Daryl smiled and started his own search for Rick. It was time to test if it really was okay for him to leave.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Funny fact: "per se" in my language is a very crude way to say "ass", if you put the words together. I only now noticed I've been spelling it incorrectly.


End file.
